Last year's Hard Life album by Big Eyes was a big favorite of mine and is still a record that gets played frequently some months down the line. This two-track double A-side seven-inch is basically the trio once again displaying its innate ability to write pop-punk songs that contain every aspect of what makes a good song in that genre:short, catchy, guitar-driven tunes, with some reverence, albeit not to the detriment of their own identity, to older bands and a rhythm section that knows what it is doing in keeping all these elements together like some kind of musical glue.

"Back From The Moon" is the lead track on this single and I'm happy to report that Big Eyes clearly stick with the old adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," as the band is intent on following the same successful formula applied to the songs on Hard Life. Once again Kate Eldridge's voice has a quality not too dissimilar to that of Kim Shattuck of the Muffs, and it's easy to hear the similarity in Big Eyes' music to that of the long standing band that Shattuck fronts. The song begins with guitar and a simple drum beat, but when the bass kicks in it really gets going and doesn't stop until three minutes and six seconds have passed. In that time you are taken on a wonderful musical ride, with a gritty, poppy song that has enough attitude about it to ensure that there is definitely a punk edge at its core.

The flipside is "I Don't Care About Friday Night," which has a great guitar riff bringing the song to life with more of the Muffs to be heard throughout, although this song also has its moments when it's impossible to ignore the influences brought to bear by the Ramones and a host of other bands that have played all kinds of rock and roll over the year. Out of the two songs this is my favorite but only by a small margin--Big Eyes haven't really fixed anything, they've just fine tuned what they do and have written two songs that match anything from their long player, hinting at potentially even greater things to come in terms of a second album.